REGION’S AIR QUALITY IMPROVES DESPITE FAILING LATEST REPORT
UP IN THE AIR

Rank for short-term particle pollution, compared with 18th worst last year

The San Diego region again received failing marks for its air quality from the American Lung Association despite achieving steady declines in pollution, a paradox that illustrates the complex and evolving nature of environmental standards.

Today, the group is scheduled to release its 14th annual “State of the Air” report, which grades air quality nationwide for the 2009-11 period. The greater San Diego area got another “F” based on the number of days it went above federal limits for ozone and particle pollution, and it again made the association’s list of the 25 most polluted cities in the country.

But during the same three-year period, the region for the first time met federal ozone benchmarks set in 1997 — an accomplishment air regulators celebrated last month. In 2012, the San Diego County Air Pollution Control District did not have a single day above the ozone ceiling set by those rules.

The American Lung Association, though, based its grades partly on more stringent federal ozone standards adopted in 2008. By this latest measure, the local air district logged 10 violations last year, said senior meteorologist Bill Brick at the district.

Such moving targets pose continual challenges for California, which faces some of the most persistent air-pollution problems in the United States but also serves as a model for air-quality regulation and clean fuels, said officials from the lung association.

To improve its grade, air-quality experts said the San Diego region will have to push harder for electric and gas-sipping vehicles, cleaner diesel engines and bigger cuts in port pollution.

“We’re really fortunate here in California to have the leadership that we do,” said Jane Warner, president and CEO of the lung association in California. “We are making progress every year, and this report in particular demonstrates that.”

While San Diego’s “F” grade doesn’t reflect that improvement, lung association officials said the long-term picture is brighter than it initially appears.

“There’s more work to do, but San Diego is within sight of achieving (more) federal standards,” said Bonnie Holmes-Gen, senior director of policy and advocacy for the association in California.

State and local air-quality officials agreed with that assessment.

A report released this month by the California Air Pollution Control Officers Association noted that smog-forming pollutants declined by 55 percent between 1980 and 2010, even as the state’s population grew by 65 percent during that time and the number of miles driven daily rose by 137 percent.

“The way I look at it is, we haven’t won the war, but we’ve won a series of battles,” Brick said. “Our goal is to have good air quality for everybody, every day in our district.”

The new “State of the Air” report analyzes monitoring records for ozone and long and short-term particle pollution, applying the association’s own formulas to interpreting the data. While federal air-quality standards exclude certain high pollution days, the association’s counts include every day that exceeds the government’s prescribed limits.